


A Winter's Tale, 1991

by kayeblaise



Series: SVT Immortals AU [11]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Team as Family, half told stories, in which winter means ghosts and magic and family and home, none of them are human, not necessary to read other parts to read this, where reflection on the past and thinking of the future brings everyone together, where winter means isolation but even that they do together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28328997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayeblaise/pseuds/kayeblaise
Summary: With the town buried in a blanket of snow, the winter conjures stories and strangers as everyone searches for the right way home.
Relationships: Chwe Hansol | Vernon & Everyone, OT13
Series: SVT Immortals AU [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/667244
Comments: 19
Kudos: 34





	1. Prologue: A Touch of Cold

The8 stomped his boots against the cold that bit at his toes. 

Across the square, in a twinkle of light from lampposts and storefront windows, a drizzle of rain still clung in tiny droplets to the signs and all the benches. The town seemed transformed under the piling of snow which had survived the mist that left it sparkling.

The night was black and peaceful, the town Christmas tree lit in spirals. And all over were people in huddled groups or pairs, darting in and out of stores in the light that lit their faces into grins.

Far from the center of it all, The8 brought out his hand from the warmth of his pocket and darted his wrist from his sleeve to check his watch, tilting the face to catch the faint light. Satisfied that he wouldn’t have to wait much longer, he tucked his hands under his arms to warm them. Despite the distant rush of people, the only sound that carried was the occasional splash of tires from the road. 

He pitched forward as someone collided into his back, sending his foot sliding on the icy brick. Half slouched to maintain balance, he shot his gaze over his shoulder, his anger reeling itself in when he saw Joshua staring back at him.

“Hey.” Joshua’s eyes betrayed a well-maintained mischief.

The8 huffed as he straightening up under the arm that stayed thrown across his shoulders. “Hi.”

“What’d you buy me?” Joshua asked in that deceptively genuine tone, gesturing toward the shopping bags hanging from his wrist.

When The8 didn’t budge, Joshua pulled on his shoulder until he lost his resolve, relenting into an evasive smile. Joshua turned to gather the rewards of his persistence, the mirth that felt more and more familiar to his face demanding response.

“Nothing,” The8 answered finally, refusing to pull his hands from his armpits to face the cold again, or else he would have looped the handles of the paper bags together so that Joshua couldn’t peek.

Joshua stayed glued at his side, and rubbed at The8’s arm like he was trying to draw the warmth back in, but when he craned over with prying eyes, The8 dug into his side with his elbow, only letting the smallest of laughs escape him as Joshua yelped.

“Quit it,” he told him good-humoredly.

The damp air felt colder than the night when it had snowed, but the atmosphere was warm.

“Is he done yet?” Joshua asked when they’d careened back toward stability, though he seemed to already know the answer.

The8 jerked his head toward the buildings on the other side of the square. He’d been watching him stand there for a while now.

Against the motion of people drifting by in winter hats pulled firmly over their ears, Dino was a lone figure, lit by the glow of a storefront window. The walkway shone under the yellow rectangle the window cut into the dark. Within that light, Dino seemed momentarily of another world.

Joshua settled at the sight. His hand slowed its pattern on The8's arm, and The8, too, felt the strange aura cast by Dino standing alone beyond the passing crowds, as if he was not a part of the motion of the world around him. 

Sobered somewhat, they barely needed a glance at one another to start their trek across the square toward him.

The snow shoveled into humps along the walkway was pitted with gravel where from a distance it only seemed to sparkle. Dino, too, seemed more a part of the world as they approached. He was lit in clear detail, his coat dark blue, eyes deep with interest as he looked through the window to the display of ornaments and home-goods and garland. A TV set flashing images of Nerf guns and Lego sets was silent through the glass. 

“Hey,” Joshua greeted, his tone pulled back from its earlier mischief.

“Hey,” Dino answered. He did not look away from the window and spoke like he had been interrupted in the middle of the thought. “Do you think that they actually sell any of those? Or are they just for show?”

He was looking at a wildly oversized bear sitting at the back of the display, a Santa hat sitting comically on its head.

“Don’t know,” Joshua mused thoughtfully. The consideration he gave the question was more than it seemed to require. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

Dino turned then, a smiled acknowledgement on his face as he agreed, “Guess so.”

“Aw, hey,” The8 interrupted to break the mood, linking arms with both of them, “Look at you guys: Christmas number three.”

“Yeah,” Joshua agreed in an echo, lost in contemplation of a string of paper angels at the top of the window frame. 

Dino hummed his distant agreement, and though The8 understood, he let his mood sour that they hadn’t reacted more. He decided that he would just have to buy them “My 3rd Christmas” ornaments so at least there was a chance they could laugh at it later. For now, he recognized the way things were: adrift between greater and smaller things. The slip between ordinary nows and strange befores and infinite laters. They all felt it then and in other moments: how winter conjured up a symphony of ghosts.

The contemplation was interrupted by the jingling of a bell as the glass door opened and an old man stepped carefully out of the store. He was hunched into the shape of a cane, but he hobbled by unassisted, two small packages wrapped in paper tucked under his arm.

And Dino watched him.

The movements the elderly man made were stiff and wobbly, but he still placed one foot quickly after the other. He was two storefronts away when the top package slipped from under his arm and tumbled to the ground.

The8 and Joshua watched as Dino broke forward, swishing down the street to the package and bending to pick it up. By then, the old man had started to turn. Dino touched his elbow as he handed him back the package.

“Excuse me, sir. You dropped this,” he said kindly.

The old man reacted with grace, accepting the package and nodding and puffing his appreciation. 

Dino responded with the same youthful energy that he’d started with, but as the man started to leave, Dino’s hand slid down his arm subtly, though no one, least of all the man, would have noticed.

When Dino straightened the rest of the way, his spine was stiff and firm. He made a lonely figure, then, in the middle of the walkway out of the reach of the light. The8 and Joshua looked at each other and then crossed to stand on either side of him. Dino still stared after the old man who slowly and uncertainly shuffled away.

“He’s alone,” Dino said after a while.

Joshua put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it.

The man’s brown leather shoes, worn but cared for, shone even at the heels as he skirted a puddle with careful steps on the uneven brick. A deep, unmovable sadness seemed to cling to the air as the old man’s figure grew smaller.

The8 tried to catch hold of Joshua’s eyes, but they were cast toward the ground in what felt like respect.

He turned instead to the old man, wondering who he had gone to the toy store for in the evening hours: imagining picture frames with snapshots of grandchildren in an empty house. Teaspoons in coffee mugs on a table that wobbled when you pressed your palms down on it in the effort to stand. 

Maybe he had a cat to feed, or a dog with eyes as watery and sunken as his own, with wrinkles as deep. Yet somehow that felt lonelier. Perhaps he sat and watched TV after dark when the moon was high, with glasses on the tip of his nose. Maybe that was how they would find him. Or perhaps tucked into bed like he’d been sleeping.

“Come on,” Joshua’s voice crackled to life then, he reached across behind Dino to manage a ruffle at The8’s hair. “We should go, now.”

There was general agreement, but the energy had been pulled from the air. It was a mystery and a wonder to each of them: the long and limited life of men.

Together, they walked one step after another down the snow-lined street, quiet in their reflections on the road home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N  
> I have scenes and half-told stories as we reenter the part of writing where I don't know where we're going but I'm happy to find the way there. Merry Christmas <3


	2. The Dome of Dark

The winter and the night swallowed urgency into dots of light along the living room. Each electric candle perched in the windows cast halos as they stared at their own reflection in the double-paned glass. A string of colored lights above the window seat barely illuminated The8 who sat under them reading something he had propped against his knees. 

S. Coups smiled at it as he circled the edge of the room and headed toward the invitation of warmth given off by the mix of butter and sugar emanating from the kitchen.

The house was dark, but the kitchen light was on. Its glow beckoned in the settling hour. 

“Smells good,” he commented as he entered the room, seeing the oven door ajar, the haze of heat pulled in waves toward the cracked open window where a baking sheet had been left to cool.

“Thanks,” Mingyu’s voice came up behind him, startling him, “But they’re just the break-and-bake. . .”

The Mingyu behind him stopped to stare at the one who had turned from rifling through the cabinets: the one S. Coups had been talking to. 

He had a cereal box in his hands and was apparently caught off guard to see two faces staring back at him: one identical to his own.

Old fear froze the breath in the room, but it grew hesitant as their shock was reflected back in the intruder’s face.

“What—”

In one motion, the other Mingyu snatched up a backpack from behind the counter and took off.

Mingyu—undoubtedly the real one now—choked out a sound of bewilderment, but the thief was already out the back door: a blast of cold preceding him.

S. Coups was jamming someone else’s boots onto his feet before he even knew that he’d flung his jacket on. He didn’t stop to tie the laces before he was out the door, racing down the back porch steps and into the snow, gaining his footing as Mingyu’s voice caught up to him, flung into the night in a shout for him to wait.

But he was across the yard and halfway to the woods by then, part of him awakening in pursuit of the already distant figure he could see in impressions among trees.

The snow stretched on for miles. Farther and farther out of sight from home, he lost all concern for the path. These were old ways, familiar even when the treetops held nothing but stars.

The flashes were soon swallowed into the valley of snow, but he was spurred on by the knowing that he didn’t need sight in the dogged hunt of the thief in the night. The woods, made bare by the winter and the storm that had blown into town three nights before felt wild and wonderful. The cold was a thrill in each inhale, the landscape shuddering and bounding as he stumbled and skidded over invisible hazards under the snow. But he stayed set on the distance, his vision pulled into a narrow scope in his race across the shadowed landscape. 

Not once in the wide flung hunt of the thief in the night did it occur to him to pause and wonder at any of it, until he was struck by a sight so odd it knocked him into contemplation.

Here in the sudden silence, the cracking of the moon’s light through the bare canopy cast shadows in spiderwebs across the covered ground. There was a thin silence to the chill under the dome of darkness.

S. Coups looked up at the illuminated siding of the box truck, stark white except for the places where the rivets leaked rust down the panels. Abandoned in the snowy landscape, it sat on sagging tires against the inky jut of trees: a strange familiarity where it shouldn’t have been, grown from the earth like the elm trees and the oaks.

His heavy exhales turned to vapor. The crunch of the snow under his shifting weight held a creak of rubber. It was so quiet in the woods that he felt his breath and his heartbeat outside of his body.

The open door in the side of the aging box truck led to darkness, and S. Coups trudged toward it, pushing down on the snow which compacted and pressed back, raising the heavy weight of the boots above the ground. He gripped the edges of the door and heaved himself up the single black step, entering into the new hollow of quiet where even the echo of the cold did not reach. 

As his eyes adjusted, he saw where the snow had drifted into a heap against the opposite wall. Far across at the other end of the truck, beyond where the snow brushed in, the stranger sat cross-legged on the floor, a tan backpack nested between his legs.

S. Coups stared. If this was the figure he had chased through the woods, they were different now. Their jacket was color-blocked in dark greens and purples, the hood pulled over their head but not obscuring their face. They did not look up as they shuffled through the bag, the shifting sounds and crinkling of his windbreaker warming the silence. Gloves, folded back at the top and velcroed in place to expose his fingers, moved deftly through the supplies they peered through.

Uncertain of himself, and not understanding what he had walked into, he clunked a step forward and summoned the energy to sound indignant, though the attempted gruffness fell flat. “Hey.” 

At first, he wasn’t sure he’d spoken loudly enough. It seemed wrong to stand in someone else’s world: an intruder himself now, in a moment that felt painted and surreal.

Something came flying at him through the air and he fumbled to grab hold of it, feeling the object catch at his arm instead of his hands. Bewildered, S. Coups pulled the small Ziploc bag free from the crook of his elbow and peered through the translucent pattern of red and green plastic to its contents.

The stranger, who now leaned against the metal siding of the truck, watched him with round eyes under the edge of the hood pulled over his forehead. His face held the same placid light as the moon’s gaze which reached even into the dark of the truck, but his features were strong and distinct where the moon was pale.

“What is this?” S. Coups questioned, holding the bag up to demand explanation.

“Peace-offering.”

S. Coups could only stay with his mouth parted for a long time, finally explaining with pointed disbelief, “You stole these from us,” shaking the two cookies in the bag as if this would somehow ring a bell.

The thief just nodded in continuous, subtle agreement, the slight leaning of his face echoing the sentiment. “Yeah,” he stated, producing a third cookie out of his jacket pocket like an afterthought and taking a bite through the center of its printed design.

S. Coups looked over his shoulder, genuinely wondering if he’d stepped into some kind of dream. He’d walked in faerie country before—learned to look askance at its shimmer of magic. Chased strange creatures forgotten by time into the deep places of the woods and stumbled into and out of traps set by beings that could bend the very shape of reality and time. The night had the uncertain edges of a fantasy.

Yet the way the stranger regarded him in no way held deception or humor. He seemed to genuinely mean what he said. The tips of his fingers, protruding through the ends of his gloves, picked a few stray crumbs from the front of his backpack and flicked them toward the corner. He had popped the rest of the cookie into his mouth and was chewing it over forgetfully, not appearing interested in the taste. Every action felt uncalculated, as if he simply did what struck him in the moment without concern for how it would seem.

Enthralled by the strangeness of it all, S. Coups let his eyes trail around the rest of the truck. There was not much of anything to look at, but where the snow drift had terminated, the bottom was covered with straw and dry leaves and an old picnic blanket that was definitely from their attic. A stack of newspapers was folded neatly in the corner. A flashlight sat on top of them.

“Do you live here?”

The stranger nodded easily, completely unbothered or unaware of S. Coups’s shifting tone. “Yeah,” he added as an after-thought, as if he did not understand why S. Coups would have reason to ask. This, S. Coups was starting to realize, was a pattern. He seemed to react first then throw in the words as if they were a courtesy that he suddenly remembered was expected of him. “Not always,” he continued, “Just for now.”

S. Coups felt a twist of sudden carelessness. The thief’s face clung to an open type of honesty that made his reactions seem hyper-real despite their subtlety. It reminded him of Joshua, maybe. Or The8: a certain lack of clarity to interactions that signaled something not quite human. Yet the tone and structure of all his words and posturing was casual and contemporary. It wouldn't have been so odd, if he didn't know the stranger could change his face.

S. Coups looked up at the ceiling of the truck, seeing the places where it had rusted through and the dark sky could be seen above. The tendrils of branches were stretched out like webbing, blacker than the sky.

“You can have the newspapers back, if you want,” the intruder noted.

“I’ve been calling to say they forgot to deliver them,” he mused as the guiltless confession reached him in his thoughts. He brought his gaze back with the new understanding that the thief had been around for some time. In a house with so many bodies, it never seemed strange to think that something had gone missing. A lot more than newspapers and sugar cookies had likely been whisked away. Despite his careless tilt toward acceptance, he couldn’t quite decide whether he should feel threatened by the stranger and their preternaturally focused gaze. “That was a neat trick you did earlier,” he said to draw out more information, “Imitating my friend.”

“Yeah,” the watcher answered neatly, shifting to stretch out his legs, “It’s a party trick, I guess.”

It was more than that. It wasn’t an illusion that he’d pulled. He’d changed shape. Been taller. Had a different face. A perfect imitation without the haze of magic.

It occurred to him, then, that he’d come into this expecting to catch the intruder off guard, to gain something in defense of the house, maybe, but now that he was here, he knew that he’d made a mistake. The other’s lack of concern felt unsettling. He recognized how alone he’d let himself become: how far he’d gone from home, and how little he knew of the creature that looked back at him with focused eyes.

He tried to shift the conversation against the other’s unbothered gaze. “When you chose our house, did you know?” He didn’t clarify what he meant and he didn’t have to. This was a shapeshifter. Whatever his origin was, that much was clear. They walked in the same worlds.

The other was nodding, and raised a hand thoughtlessly to drag the hood back from their head. “Yeah, I mean—is it really a secret?” And though he hadn’t seemed the least bit bothered by the accusation of theft, and still did not show any apprehension over S. Coups racing after him through the night, he did seem affected at the idea that he might have shared a secret that shouldn’t be exposed.

“Well, we weren’t advertising it.”

This drew the first real expression to the other’s face and it was wildly exaggerated: a loud assertion of skepticism at what he’d heard. He shifted unexpectedly to stand, the backpack staying forgotten at his feet as he counted out his sentences on his fingers, “To be fair: You have only magic-use plants in your garden, own a black cat that is _definitely_ not a cat, and you have visible ward markings along the fence posts at the property line.

Avoiding offense, he countered, “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Plus,” they continued, getting to the fourth finger now in their count, “more of you live in that house than actually _leave_ the house.”

“Right, but. . . “

“And on top of that,” he finished with casual, almost polite accusation: “You were a wolf, like, four nights ago running through the woods. These woods. The ones we’re in now.”

S. Coups spun through a few half-started sentences to respond, but was too self-aware to finish them.

The stranger, who had his eyebrow raised, stuck out his hand unexpectedly. “I’m Vernon, by the way.” The “by the way” ebbed in volume but not in confidence. His eyes held level onto his, the angle slightly upward with how he’d leant off balance to reach his hand across, as if some barrier stood in the way. 

S. Coups shook his hand, and was fairly sure he did not need to share his own name. Still, he told him what he probably already knew. “Seungcheol, or S. Coups. I’m not picky.”

Vernon nodded, and he went back to where he had started, dropping back to the floor of the truck with a puffed exhale like he’d sunken into an arm chair at the end of a long day. His arm was draped casually over the backpack beside him now. “I can pay you back for the stuff, if you want,” he said, patting the front of it. “When spring comes, at least. Not much to do this late in the year.”

“You work around here?” S. Coups asked, made curious by the idea.

“Here and there,” he answered lightly, “Just passing through, really. Like to keep moving.”

To the other’s distinctly casual words, S. Coups wanted to joke that he couldn’t relate: that the roots they’d set down here were deep and they liked it that way. But he couldn’t quite get the words out. Maybe, on some level, he wouldn’t exactly mean it.

Vernon, though, he thought suddenly, could have stolen from anywhere. Any store, any grocer, any house. Presumably, with what he could do, their place would be one of the poorest choices. Too many people who might catch on to his trick. Perhaps, he had just gotten careless after months of success. Or maybe he’d meant to get caught.

He certainly wasn’t running now. 

“Listen,” He said the word before he knew what he was doing, and then fumbled to gather the words into a sentence that would be sufficient, “it’s really cold out and. . . if you just wanted somewhere to. . . I mean, even for the night if you just. . .” He gestured over his shoulder then dropped his hands, slipping them into his pockets in a full awareness of how lame the invitation sounded.

Vernon simply studied him for a moment, then said, “Would that make you feel better?” This appeared to be a genuine matter of consideration to him. 

S. Coups shrugged and then it became sort of a nod as he said, “Yeah,” then “I don’t know,” and finally, “Maybe.”

Vernon watched him, and then got to his feet, pulling the backpack up over his shoulder. He stepped forward and added as an afterthought: “Okay,” with such casual, agreeable steadiness that S. Coups was certain if he said _I changed my mind, sorry_ that Vernon’s demeanor would not change. He would just nod, agree, and return to where he’d been when S. Coups had found him. Here in the back of a parcel truck in the middle of the snowy woods.

For a moment, the hesitation hung in the air.

And standing contrapposto with his backpack slung over his shoulder, Vernon held all the poise of a Greek statue and all the magnitude of a local teen hanging outside the gas station. That, if nothing else, made S. Coups curious. Vernon's open face and the Ziploc bag of cookies stuffed into his own pocket became a reassurance, then. And the shredded cuffs on the other’s jeans, brushing discolored shoelaces, made him aware of the sturdy weight of the boots on his own feet. Vulnerable to the leaning of his own sympathies and carelessness, he decided, at worst, he could get away with leading the stranger back home.

“Follow me, then” he said.

Vernon shrugged his agreement. Though, obviously, he already knew the way. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Happy New Year <3 It's been so odd to write in half-told stories again. I'm so used to all the planning and forethought that went into story ten. Now, we can kind of all sit back and let the story go wherever it will go. :) Lots of little chapters have started to pop-up in the drafts that I can't wait to see the connections between. For now, we've finished the year, and from 2017 to 2021, we now /at last/ have all 13 of our boys here.
> 
> To whatever comes next. And all that came before. All my love <3 -K


	3. Jenga Towers

Wonwoo was waiting for them. He was standing out in the cold, the light from the porch reflecting off of his glasses. He had been complaining for over a year that he was sick of squinting and had finally found himself an eyeglass maker who didn’t look too closely at the signatures on prescriptions: who didn't already know his face.

They were having a harder and harder time with things like that in recent years.

“You’re it?” S. Coups called to him across the yard, stepping through his own deep imprints in the snow. 

“Expecting more of a crowd?” Wonwoo asked. His voice carried though he had not raised it. He was wrapped in an impression of calm. Even at a distance, it was clear that he was in pajamas, a housecoat tied at his waist. Though he seemed very aware that S. Coups was not alone, he had not made a show of it, yet.

“I could have been lying in a ditch,” S. Coups complained to keep the atmosphere at ease.

“We’d have sent Hoshi if you took too long,” Wonwoo responded breezily. His focus came to rest on Vernon.

“Hi.” He twisted his hand free of his pocket. “I’m Wonwoo.”

“Vernon,” he said and shook the offered hand. If Vernon expected more scrutiny than that, he didn’t receive it. 

“Where is everyone?” S. Coups asked. He suspected now that Wonwoo had watched for their return through the kitchen window. He would have seen them coming from a distance and had time to walk out and meet them. He hadn't bothered to put a jacket on.

“They’re inside,” Wonwoo said, “DK and Hoshi came back with the tree.”

S. Coups turned to Vernon in mock indignation, though Vernon remained expressionless.

“It better be a damn good tree, then."

“It is. They named it Percy." It was impossible to tell if Wonwoo was joking as he turned over his shoulder to look back up at the house. “We should head in.” He gestured with a tilt of his head toward the porch, and when he saw no disagreement, he trudged back to the steps.

S. Coups could see now that Wonwoo had a pair of boots on. The cuffs of his flannel pants were damp were they dragged on the snow.

He realized at once that the boots were his. He glanced down at the ones he’d thrown on and recognized them as Wonwoo’s. He’d left in such a rush. Even now, he wasn’t quite sure what had compelled him to go.

He turned to Vernon and ushered him forward, offering him the place in front of him. “Come on.”

They followed Wonwoo inside.

. . .

DK was content to sit with his back against the wall in tired accomplishment, his arm hanging over Hoshi’s shoulders, one leg bent into a steeple. The sharp smell of pine had transformed the living room. The needles still clung to his coat and he reached up to pull one from Hoshi’s hair.

The overhead light was warming the air, so he removed his arm to give himself the room to pull his jacket off. Hoshi scooched over just enough to avoid his elbow. 

Above them, Joshua had rocked onto his toes to try to reach the top-most branches, tilting them experimentally. 

“Watch it,” Mingyu warned as the whole thing wobbled. He was lying on his stomach underneath the tree, adjusting the plastic stand that they had finally gotten it settled into. 

“We need to spin it away from the wall more,” Joshua told Mingyu, stepping one leg over him to give himself more leverage, a hand braced on the window frame. 

“Which wall?” Mingyu asked, voice strained as his lungs pushed back against the floor.

“I think it looks good,” Hoshi told them, "Seungkwan said he's been watching this one for a while."

“No, it’s crooked,” Joshua insisted, ducking his head to look under his own arm as he called, “Jun, forward or more right?”

Jun had taken over the couch and was half buried behind his knees. He didn’t look up.

“Jun?”

He gave a small “hm,” of acknowledgment, then finally paused and looked over. He gave the tree the smallest of glances and said, “Looks good,” before his face returned to the GameBoy he kept tilting to catch the light.

“For God’s sake, Josh, just do whatever you want,” Mingyu complained to hurry things along.

“For _God’s sake_ ,” Hoshi repeated at DK’s ear to catch the humor of it.

DK grinned and pulled another pine needle from his hair: sap still stuck to his fingers, minor scratches on the backs of his hands.

“Eight, back me up here,” Joshua begged.

Sitting on the floor in the corner of the room, The8 merely shrugged. He seemed content, then, just to be watching.

“It’s like you guys don’t even care,” Joshua grumbled, hitting his foot against Mingyu’s side lightly. 

“Sorry, but people have been dragging trees into their houses every winter _forever_ ,” Mingyu countered with impatience.

“We’re people,” Jun elaborated, still pressing buttons.

“You have us to thank for that,” a new voice said. 

Jeonghan had stepped into the room.

They all gave him a pause of their attention as he hovered in the doorway, then moved across to the couch. He tapped Jun’s legs so he’d make space and Jun scrunched up obediently, watching him over the forgotten game.

Focus lingered on Jeonghan until he had sat down and given them the small smile they seemed to be looking for.

Joshua turned back to the tree. His voice was lower as he spoke at the branches rather than the rest of them, “Well, I’m not people.” There was a shiver of needles as he worked now. 

DK caught Jeonghan’s eyes. He pinched his mouth into a vague smile as Jeonghan twisted loose threads on the pillow he had pulled into his lap.

“Well, I think it’s exciting,” Hoshi said suddenly, surging to his feet. He pulled his sweater down firmly and then stepped back with his hands on his hips to survey the tree. “Toward the fireplace should do it, Josh. Right, Eight?”

The8 had been picking at his fingernails but he glanced up to nod his affirmation with more sincerity. “Yeah,” he agreed as an afterthought.

No one else made a complaint this time as they watched the tree tilt into alignment. 

At that moment, while Joshua held the tree and Mingyu started tightening the plastic screws that kept it in place, the doorway darkened, and Wonwoo reentered the room. 

He was not alone. 

Mingyu dragged himself out from under the tree, brushing off his clothes. Joshua turned, too, rolling his palms against one another distractedly, but his eyes, like everyone else’s had gone to the doorway. Even Jun let his head drop backward so he could see who had arrived.

“Hey,” Wonwoo said casually and pointedly. He stepped toward the mantelpiece, clearing up the view of S. Coups and the stranger he’d brought with him. The silence that followed their arrival felt like a judgement. “This is Vernon,” Wonwoo told them.

Jun made an awkward wave from his upside-down position, but pulled back when he realized he was acting alone. For a long second, it seemed he might be the only one to react, as the room tried to read itself.

“Hi,” Joshua tried as the lapse became awkward.

Mingyu made the first real move. He took a few long steps, pinning his eyes to the newcomer, though his question didn’t seem directed at him. “Ah,” he stated knowingly, “from the kitchen?”

“The very same,” S. Coups answered, his voice bordering dangerously close to chipper. “I invited him. Hope no one minds.” He seemed very much to be _telling_ them that they didn’t mind. 

Mingyu gave Wonwoo a quick glance, and Wonwoo didn’t exactly nod, but the nearly imperceptible movement he made was signal enough. Mingyu stuck out his hand. “Thought you were a golem or something,” he said, dressing up his expression with the notes of a laugh. He kept his hand held out and waited. 

Vernon looked down at his hand, and it was impossible to read his expression when he deliberately took it, staring back at Mingyu with intense but undemanding eyes.

The lingering pleasantness on Mingyu’s face gave the tiniest twitch. The falter was enough that S. Coups noticed, but it wasn’t clear if Vernon saw it, too, or what he would have made of it. He was answering, “Nice to meet you,” like they hadn’t met before. 

To be fair, it was unlikely the kitchen had counted.

When they dropped hands, S. Coups steered Vernon a little further into the room, and Mingyu rounded behind them, giving Wonwoo a curious frown until he realized he was still holding out his hand. He closed it into a fist and tucked it away into his pocket like a thought for another time.

S. Coups had launched into further introductions. “Vernon, this is Hoshi. Then DK. Joshua. That’s Jeonghan, this is Jun.” He did a little shuffle as he looked for anyone else. “Missing a few, actually.”

“I’m here,” The8 announced himself, getting to his feet behind S. Coups and shaking Vernon’s half-gloved hand. “The8,” he introduced shortly. Vernon nodded in acceptance of the greeting. He was still clutching the strap of his bag. His shoes were tracking bits of winter into the house.

“Cold?” The8 said lightly. Vernon’s fingers, exposed at the end of his gloves had brushed his palm.

“Oh, I’m good,” Vernon shrugged lightly, but he was spoken over by S. Coups who said,

“I'm game if you want to get things going.”

The8 took the meaning. He returned to his corner and crouched by the hearth on the cracked stones. Though no one gave it much mind, Vernon studied the snap of The8’s fingers into his palm and the glow that sheltered under his cupped hands as he breathed sparks into life, dumping the flickering into the wood and nudging them into catching.

“You’re new,” Hoshi said to Vernon, then, his attitude breaking the remaining hesitation. “That’s always exciting.”

“Don’t say always,” a voice answered from across the room. Woozi had appeared, leaning against the wall on the far side of the couch. His arms were crossed and eyes keen.

“Yeah, that’s the spirit,” S. Coups sighed. He turned and hit Jun’s knee, “Come on, budge up.”

Jun drew his legs in further and folded them under himself. He had finally abandoned the game onto the side table. 

S. Coups gestured Vernon to the spot. “Have a seat.”

He tried to refuse, but S. Coups insisted and turned him bodily to the location. Vernon shrugged off his backpack and put it between his feet on the floor as he was pushed into place. S. Coups left him there to find a spot across the room. He sat at the edge of the window seat with his legs stretched out so the fire cast heat in their direction. His hands gripped the edge of the bench for balance. DK kept glancing back up at him conspicuously, something loud written in his eyes, until S. Coups reached out and dropped a hand to the top of his head to stop him. His own gaze was on Jeonghan, though, who blinked at him across the room with an expression he could not read. 

“I’m just going to ask,” Mingyu announced to no one and everyone. He had plopped down next to The8. S. Coups was already drumming up a warning when Mingyu asked, “How do you do it?” He spoke with a touch of genuine curiosity. 

There before the many-eyed form of the living room, Vernon sat with his hands folded in his lap. He made his usual pause, emoting for a few seconds before he gave his answer. “I just do,” he said in the end. He didn’t sound like he was trying to be difficult. The answer seemed to be the one he had to give.

“Does that mean you could turn into anyone?”

Vernon tilted his head, looking up as he decided, “Yeah, pretty much."

And although they were all somewhat lost in the woods, The8 grumbled jokingly, “Why pick Mingyu, then?”

Mingyu sneered at him and then shoved his head lightly with his finger. “Cause he’s got taste,” he answered.

While they teetered on the edge of an argument, Dino came into the room with a large plastic bowl cradled in his arms and a spool of thread clutched at the corner of his mouth. His hand held the kitchen scissors against the blue side of the popcorn bowl.

“ _I had to look everywhere but I finally found thread,”_ he spoke around the spool, his pronunciation loose in the effort to keep the thread from dropping to the floor.

Dino threw his gaze around the suddenly crowded room until he caught Mingyu grinning. He completely missed the stranger on the couch as he dropped the spool awkwardly into his elbow. “What?”

“Did they convince you we literally string popcorn for the tree?” Woozi said, figuring it out. 

Jun clipped a short laugh of realization and a few of the others breathed their own amusement as Mingyu reached up and took the bowl happily from Dino’s hands.

Wielding the scissors before him, Dino countered, “Well, I don’t know! You always see it in the books and the movies and stuff.”

"It's not something we did last year," Joshua pointed out reasonably.

Mingyu, in high spirits, tugged on Dino’s sleeve until he relented and sat down, forgetting the scissors and spool in favor of angrily grabbing a handful of the popcorn. He glared at Mingyu and chewed with quiet malice.

After a while, though, he noticed that everyone was still staring at him. There was a kind of anticipation on their faces. He swallowed deliberately, making a quick judge of DK and Joshua’s expressions for a hint as to why. When their usual transparency yielded no results, he asked, “What?”

“We were just wondering when you’d notice,” S. Coups admitted.

Dino sought out Jeonghan next, and while the older was sitting with his elbow on the armrest without any indication, next to him on the couch was someone that Dino, for a moment, didn’t realize was a stranger. 

“Oh,” he said once he knew.

“He wouldn’t survive in the wild,” Mingyu sighed regretfully to the rest of the room.

Hoshi grinned in enjoyment and added, “That’s S. Coups, though, isn’t it?” He turned his spotlight energy onto S. Coups beside him. “You literally went feral over Christmas cookies.”

“Yeah, ha ha,” S. Coups countered, sweeping his leg in Hoshi’s direction, though the imp dodged artfully.

Hoshi tried to gather DK into laughing, and DK, who had been silent for a while, gave Hoshi the smile he was looking for, though the look faded quickly. He had been focused on Vernon since he arrived.

The8 had made note of this and many other things, but now he watched Dino study Vernon with fascinated apprehension. And as Hoshi and S. Coups made their banter, Dino had said with twilight curiosity, “We haven’t met.”

“No, yeah, I’m Vernon,” he answered casually. He had his elbows on his knees. If he noticed anything odd in Dino’s expression, he didn’t show it.

But The8 noticed, and he studied Dino as he hid his disconcertment to greet Vernon politely in return. The8 tried to catch Dino's eye, but he was off in his own thoughts, so he tucked the idea away for later, much like Mingyu had done when he'd folded his hand into his pocket, and like Wonwoo, who loomed at the other side of the mantel, rolling his fingers over the thoughts in his palms. The8 could almost hear the cogs turning in his head like the swish of the clock. Both of them had noticed the same thing: Dino knew almost everyone, even if they didn't know him.

That dark ticking of thought was mirrored across the room in Woozi who spoke with casual design, “What brings you to the area?” His words gathered the room back to center, putting out the small fires of side conversation.

Vernon seemed prepared for the swing of their returning focus. He shrugged. “Just passing through.”

“Where’s home,” Jeonghan asked him, then, the back of his hand bumping Vernon’s jacket sleeve with the same light touch of his question. Jeonghan was asking for Vernon and not for the room.

It made little difference. “Here and there,” Vernon responded lightly. He rocked his hand a bit as he spoke. But the answer felt unsatisfying. Or maybe a little sad. No one seemed able to tell. “I like to keep moving.”

“That’s exciting,” Hoshi piped up, a smile conjured on his face to sweep out the conversation’s pauses and the doubts they betrayed. “Getting to travel.”

Vernon’s answers were level and unguarded but they gave away nothing, to the point where it felt like design. “What about you guys?” he asked with sudden politeness. “Where, uh, . . .?”

“Oh, here,” S. Coups responded to the insinuation of the question. “We live here.”

“All of you,” Vernon asked. It was hard to tell if the raising of his eyebrows reflected confusion or if he was impressed or something else entirely. It was the first real expression he’d made as he continued to nod his thoughts.

“Yep,” S. Coups laughed in self-awareness that he couldn’t muster to full sincerity. “This is home.” The room was growing hotter with the fire beating out heat. His cheering statement was buoyed by a few spare sounds of agreement, but all of it teetered like a Jenga tower. Each new entry into the conversation knocked another person into ticking contemplation that grew more and more obvious and uncomfortable. Their wariness was laid bare in silences.

With the gap growing longer, Vernon suddenly recommitted, saying, “Yeah, it’s cool. You know. . . that,” he swept his hand at them vaguely, clasping his hands back together as he rummaged for words, “I mean, with everyone being so different, its nice that you . . .”

“Ah, you can see that, then?” Wonwoo commented in a way that arced across the room. The Jenga tower collapsed, and Vernon had to twist to stare up at Wonwoo who leant on the mantle with purposeful ease.

And Vernon kept staring. “Yeah.” His mouth toyed with a disarming smile, but his eyes did not yield to it. “I guess so.”

S. Coups might have been sighing if he wasn’t stuck in place, a warning and helpless look fighting at the same time for dominance in his expression. The entire room was now pulled into Wonwoo’s well of gravity.

“Cause you’ve been watching us? Or because you can just tell?” Wonwoo asked.

“Wonwoo.” It was the only word Jeonghan mustered. He seemed tired. S. Coups watched him closely from across the room.

But Wonwoo continued: “You know, I’ve never seen a shapeshifter before.”

It wasn’t an invitation for Vernon to respond, but in his eyes and his lean forward, Vernon stayed steady against Wonwoo’s words.

“Not like you, I mean,” Wonwoo continued with unearthed speculation. “Turning into animals, sure, that’s common enough, but people? It's-” When he wanted, Wonwoo could be deadly with words. Each rise and fall of his tone was unassuming, but he seemed to be casting his words across the room to Woozi who caught the meaning and molded it into a word brimming with purpose:

“It’s unique.”

Vernon’s expression coiled. He cast his eyes at the ground for a moment and his tongue touched at his teeth in what could have been amusement or a hundred deeper things. He uttered, “Yeah, that’s me,” just under his breath. Whatever illusion he’d managed to hold onto of unbothered simplicity cracked as he said, “A chimera, right?” with an open invitation for them to laugh, though they couldn’t, because he coated the word with ire.

He confronted Wonwoo with startling calm. “That was a nickname, I mean.” The last line suddenly released the room from any repentance as Vernon leaned back into the couch cushions, freely joking, “Circus folks are weird you could say.”

Wonwoo had gotten what he wanted, it seemed, but the Jenga pieces had spilled across the floor and they all sat there staring at them powerlessly. Until Woozi, like he couldn’t help himself, said, "You were in a circus?”

“Few years,” Vernon popped out casually, any shadow banished. “Good way to travel.”

"What did you do?"

Vernon leveled a dead-serious look at Hoshi across the room. "Concessions."

Though they had been given permission to move on from the strange tension of a moment ago, they stayed hesitant to do so, until Mingyu said with strained positivity, “That's definitely different."

“Unique.” Vernon acknowledged with sharp awareness.

Hoshi made a sudden move to pick up the pieces. “You really want to see unique? I mean, look at us! Dino here was literally _Death_ —”

“Hoshi—” Wonwoo cut him off without any pretense of hiding it, but he hadn't been the only one. Even Jeonghan had leant forward. S. Coups was on his feet, and he turned the jolt of energy into a poor cover up, “Hey, I think we’ll need more than a bowl of popcorn, right?” He had his arm around Hoshi’s back. “Bet we can find something if we scrounge around.” 

Hoshi, very aware, it seemed, of what he’d done, cast a shrugging apology at Dino who dismissed it. They were interrupted by Wonwoo’s sudden suggestion of "The more help the merrier."

S. Coups went and held out his hand to help Jeonghan upright, the room already shifting and emptying in noticeable ways. Voices laid claim to napkins or snacks or paper plates in a cascade of sudden excuses.

Wonwoo stopped at the back of the couch to squeeze Jun’s shoulder. “You wanna come with?”

Jun looked back and up at him. “No, I’m good.”

“. . .You sure?”

Jun nodded and then released the strain on his neck. The center of gravity in the room had shrunk to the corner by the fireplace.

Wonwoo was the last to leave.

Only a few of them were left, now, and though there were occasional voices caught from the kitchen, much of the conversation from the other room was noticeably dim.

In the new arrangement, Jun found he’d crunched himself so far into the couch corner that he was practically sitting on the armrest. He wasn’t uncomfortable, though. Not anymore,. He exchanged a quick look with The8 who seemed to share his sentiment: they were staying.

Vernon spoke unexpectedly: “Must be hard with so many people.” A smile that he seemed to want waited uncertainly on his face, like he hoped there was a reason they’d stayed. “Grocery bill must be crazy.”

Jun was happy with the joke and explained, "Not everyone needs to eat,” casting his eyes at the trio by the fireplace to see if they’d laugh with him. He saw Mingyu and tacked on, “Mingyu eats enough for four, though.”

“ _Hardy har_ ,” Mingyu fake laughed, but he seemed happy that the room had untensed enough to hear the fire.

Jun had noticed it, too: how loudly they’d crowded accusations into the silence and the spaces between questions. It seemed so much quieter now.

It was true he didn’t understand what Vernon was, but they hadn’t known what Joshua was either at first. Or DK. It hardly mattered. He noticed that those of them who were left might have understood that. DK, though he hadn’t spotted him at first, had also remained in his corner by the tree. He looked deliberately at Vernon and back at Jun, but Jun couldn't figure out what he was trying to tell him. 

“You’re not hot?” Jun asked Vernon suddenly, staring at the rumpled mountains that formed in his coat sleeve.

“Nah, I’m good,” he said.

“I’m dying,” Mingyu answered through the exertion of standing. He held out the popcorn to Vernon who accepted it agreeably. 

Mingyu left him with the bowl, going across the room to lean into the window seat, welcoming the cold air that leaked through the large panes of glass. He thought about cracking them open just a bit, but Vernon was still wearing so many layers he figured it would be rude.

Though, part of him was not sure if Vernon felt the cold. Mingyu wasn’t sure because he had shaken Vernon’s hand and seen nothing at all. No flashes. No images. Not an inkling. As if Vernon did not and had never existed. He was curious, but not urgently so. There were half-a-dozen reasons he might not have seen anything. If Vernon meant harm, he’d have had every opportunity before now.

The others had turned to hospitality as well. Dino had stayed, unbothered by Hoshi's words, and he asked Vernon with genuine curiosity, “You said you travel. Where’s the strangest place you’ve been to?”

Vernon looked at the ceiling once again, like his thoughts needed to be gathered in the back of his head. “Every place is strange if you’re paying close enough attention,” he decided. “What about you guys?”

It was clear that Vernon was asking where they’d traveled. The question sank to the bottom of Mingyu’s stomach like a lead weight although he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t have an answer he liked, he supposed. “We mostly stay here,” he said, feeling suddenly unnerved by it.

Vernon looked at Jun as if waiting for a contradiction. Jun only answered, “I mean, I lived a few other places,” his eyes were unsettled and he looked to the others. 

“Oh,” Vernon said, picking up on a shift of feeling. 

“I’ve seen some things,” Dino said then, but the words felt monstrously unknowable. Mingyu imagined that Dino had intended to compare notes: that he had a list of far-flung places he had been to that Vernon might have recognized or understood. The thought of that was sad, suddenly, that he hadn’t thought it possible to share it with the rest of them.

They were stopped from further introspection when Joshua arrived: the first one back from the scattered masses. He entered from the kitchen empty handed. “They don’t need me,” he explained, as if he hadn’t understood that the exodus was a ruse to regroup in private.

“Too many cooks?” Dino noted.

“You could say that,” Joshua agreed. He picked the floor next to the window seat for himself, close by the tree he had struggled to put in balance. "Hope you guys like olives and crackers, by the way."

“I get the sense you guys have been together for a while,” Vernon said with polite humor.

“You have no idea,” Mingyu laughed.

Yet the laugh could not sustain itself, because awareness of who he sat near struck him. He saw Joshua look off at the wall. 

The fireplace crackled, and The8 turned a log over with his bare hands to stir it to life. 

Hoshi was the next to return in a pop of sound: bringing plastic cups and a bottle of ginger ale that was definitely flat. “We’re not exactly stocked up right now,” he announced to preempt any accusations. 

“Got anything stronger?” Mingyu joked, though he kind of meant it. The others would be back soon enough.

The conversation picked up again at Dinos’s urging, and Mingyu carried it after that until Joshua joined in, so the room was buzzing agreeably by the time Jeonghan returned. He was empty-handed, but he folded into his old spot without hesitation, listening openly.

There was a steady stream of returns after that: each one staggered to disguise the fact that they’d been conversing in hushed voices in the other room.

There was a feeling of contrition to the way that S. Coups sat down next to Vernon on the couch and immediately joined into the discussion of local spots that had changed in recent years. 

Vernon listened intently to everything, accepting a refill of the plastic cup in his hands when Wonwoo offered with a kind of surprise. Woozi didn’t enter the conversation much, but he too joined in the circle, choosing the space that remained next to Mingyu. 

Things kept rearranging as the night went on, but the tension never rose again as it had before. In the end, Wonwoo found himself in the far side of the room. He watched Jeonghan excuse himself after a while when things had gotten late and the fire had died down. It was calmer, and he wondered at his own actions as he tapped the empty cup in his hands with his finger. 

Against the backdrop of pocket conversations jockeying for volume, DK suddenly sidled in close to him, not looking at him directly as he murmured, “You can see it, right?”

Wonwoo pulled back with surprise to catch DK’s eye but he was apparently trying to avoid attention, because he did not return the look, instead watching across the room where Vernon was talking somewhat awkwardly with Joshua.

“See what?”

“His face,” DK told him pointedly. Wonwoo turned to look, but whatever DK meant, he had already moved on, leaving Wonwoo to stare at Vernon and try to puzzle it out. But if there was something DK wanted him to see, he saw nothing except the ease of the emotions that now flashed across Vernon's face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N  
> It's been a bit! The chapter is long and I can't see straight anymore so I'm going to just toss it out there. My dad just went into major surgery but I think it's going to go well. In the meantime, my brain is goop. Love you guys. I can't tell if anything I wrote makes sense right now but I'll do damage control one day.
> 
> In which everyone's out of character, or are they or AREN'T they, or /are/ they?  
> And DK sees something no one else can see.

**Author's Note:**

> For New Readers: https://kayeblaise.tumblr.com/theimmortals


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